| Steve McQueen: King of Cool Tales of a Lurid Life by Darwin Porter Hardcover, with lots of photos and a comprehensive index. Available now. |
The most honest and uncompromising biography of Steve McQueen ever written ISBN: 978-1-936003-05-1 Price : US$ 26.95 Hardcover 6” x 9” 466 pages with lots of photos From Blood Moon Productions, Ltd. |
| The drama of Steve McQueen's life far surpassed anything he ever played on screen. He followed in the footsteps of his mother, a prostitute, who eventually seduced him as part of an Oedipal fling. Earlier, he'd been brutally molested by some of this mother's "johns," and endured gang rape in reform school. In a bordello in Santo Domingo, he hired himself out as a sex object and porn performer. Returning to New York, he hustled on the streets of Times Square. Later, in a borrowed tux, he became a "gentleman for rent," the toy boy of rich, aging women, two of whom included Joan Crawford and Lana Turner. When stardom finally came, the abused became the abuser. "The last thing I want is to fall in love with a broad." The string of seductions that followed earned him an almost mythical status as a pansexual Love Machine. His A-list conquests included Jacqueline Bissett, Faye Dunaway, Lauren Hutton, Sharon Tate, Mamie Van Doren, Tuesday Weld, Natalie Wood, and Marilyn Monroe. Publicly, he insisted that he loathed homosexuals, yet he often went to bed with them, especially if they were bikers or race car drivers. He had a tumultuous sexual relationship with James Dean, and a longer love/hate affair with Paul Newman. Other sexual liaisons developed with Peter Lawford, Sal Mineo, Rock Hudson, Chuck Connors, and George Peppard. McQueen lived life at top speed, like the machines he raced so famously. His early death remains a source of lurid speculation, all of it explored within this pioneering biography by celebrity chronicler Darwin Porter. McQueen: Screen hero. Rebel. Sexual Outlaw. Megastar. Loner. Male hustler. Street kid. Gigolo. Restless husband. Mysterious recluse. Brutal yet tender. Savage. And, in the words of Jacqueline Bissett, "a beautiful, beautiful man." With the publication of this pioneering work, the result of years of research, untold stories are exposed. Within its pages, "McQueen's Unreachable Star" comes down to Earth. |
Steve McQueen: A Hot Book about the King of Cool Tales of a Lurid Life Available on December 1, 2009, through this and dozens of other websites, and at fine bookstores everywhere, worldwide. Available wholesale to the book trade through the National Book Network (www.NBNBooks.com) and in the UK through Turnaround, Inc. |
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| NEW, HOT, METICULOUSLY RESEARCHED, and AVAILABLE NOW |
WITH his icy blue eyes staring challengingly from beneath heavy lids, a sneer on his lips and an air of nonchalant
disdain, Steve McQueen was Hollywood’s epitome of cool.
The star of Bullitt, The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven became the world’s highest-paid actor, a Sixties
pop icon slouching through movies as if he had a grudge against the world.
He seemed to have it all – beautiful wives, mansions, planes, fast cars and the film world at his feet. Yet his devil-
may-care insouciance came at a terrible price, reveals a sensational new biography to be published in Britain soon,
for behind the glittering facade hid a troubled psyche.
In Darwin Porter’s shocking exposé Steve McQueen, King Of Cool: Tales Of A Lurid Life. the actor is described
as the illegitimate child of an alcoholic prostitute, beaten and brutalised by a drunken stepfather who pimped him
out as a rent boy,
He grew up as a gang member, arsonist and thief, was sent to reform school and seemed headed for a squalid life
of crime, Porter claims. “If I hadn’t made it as an actor, I might have wound up a hood,” McQueen confessed.
Between jobs as a circus barker, lumberjack, brothel worker and a stint in the US Marines – in which he was busted
down to private seven times – McQueen survived by selling sex, the book reveals.
“He had no morals,” says Porter, who previously penned biographies of Marlon Brando and Paul Newman. “He was
an alley cat who would have sex with anyone. Yet that’s what helped make him a star because he was willing to
sleep with anybody – men, women, acting coaches, co-stars, rivals, idols – if it could win him a role.”
The actor claimed he slept with all his leading ladies and his list of alleged lovers is a Who’s Who of Hollywood, from
Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich to James Dean and Paul Newman. He also had affairs with older actresses
including Ava Gardner, Mae West, Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.
Porter says McQueen was never happy. “He had suffered so many abuses in childhood that as an adult he could
never have enough money, enough sex, could never be satisfied. He was a sad, lonely man.
“Even in his glory days, being paid $5million and 20 per cent of the gross for a movie, he still demanded that
producers pay him an extra $250 for his watch because he’d worn it in the film.”
McQueen was born in 1930 in Indianapolis, Indiana, to beautiful blonde 19-year-old hooker Jullian Crawford. His
father, stunt pilot Terrence McQueen, ran off weeks later without marrying her and never saw his son again. Jullian
dumped her son on relatives while she walked the streets, occasionally returning to take him back into her squalid
life.
Moving with his mother to Los Angeles, McQueen fell in with a street gang, robbing old ladies, breaking into shops
and stealing cars. His stepfather beat him up, then had him sent to a brutal reform school to straighten him out.
McQueen’s unhappy childhood would later make him a study in contradictions. “He loved women yet treated them
appallingly,” says Porter. Director Henry Hathaway said: “He hated women. He used them for sexual relief and
discarded them quickly.”
Porter explains: “He had too strong an attachment to his mother, who never gave him the love he craved. She kept
rejecting him. But he was little better. He demanded fidelity yet was never faithful. He cheated on first wife Neile
almost daily and didn’t hide his affairs from her. Yet the day she admitted one affair in their entire 15-year marriage
he practically killed her. He could never forgive her and filed for divorce.”
His friend actor James Coburn said: “Perhaps because Steve had been abused all his life he suffered from acute
paranoia. If everything was going right he felt something was wrong. If there was no ¬trouble he had to stir some up.”
Porter agrees: “He never got over his childhood scars. Above all he wanted to be perceived as a macho man’s man.
He was offered the lead in Breakfast At Tiffany’s but refused to play a kept man. But in real life he was kept for
years by his first wife, actress Neile Adams.
“He was a misfit, a bad boy and a rebel just at the time when that became a cool image in Hollywood. He abused
drugs, drank to excess, smoked three packs a day and was riddled with self-destructive urges.”
While McQueen did not have a death wish, he clearly harboured a reckless disregard for his safety.
“He was a skilled motorcyclist and racing car driver but crashed repeatedly, nearly killing himself several times,”
says Porter. “He claimed that was when he felt most alive.”
It was his sexual appetite that saved his life in 1969 when his sometime lover Sharon Tate invited him to her party in
the Hollywood Hills. “He stopped for a drink on the way, met an actress and ended up back at her place,” says
Porter.
“Everyone at Tate’s home was killed that night by Charles ¬Manson’s followers.” Semi-literate and barely educated,
McQueen made bad career choices, turning down the leads in classic movies including One Flew Over The Cuckoo’
s Nest, Apocalypse Now, Play Misty For Me, The Wild Bunch and Ryan’s Daughter. He dumped Butch Cassidy and
The Sundance Kid because he refused second billing to Paul Newman.
Always “difficult” on film sets, he became a diva, firing crew on a whim. “In the end fewer scripts came his way and
he had burned too many bridges,” says Porter. “He was on his way out in Hollywood when he contracted cancer.”
McQueen was diagnosed with mesothelioma, usually brought on by exposure to asbestos. While in the Marines the
actor had spent weeks repairing asbestos insulation in buildings and later wore asbestos-lined suits as a racing
driver. Diagnosed as untreatable, McQueen went to Mexico where he resorted to experimental treatments that
promised to shrink the tumours that ravaged his body. They didn’t work.
McQueen died at only 50 in November 1980. After a simple funeral at his ranch in Santa Paula, California, his three
wives – Neile Adams, Ali MacGraw and actress Barbara Minty – all ended up sitting on the actor’s empty bed. “His
dream fantasy come true,” said old friend Elmer Valentine, “except he wasn’t there to take advantage. He would
have seduced them all.”
Porter adds: “Steve McQueen has become an iconic hero, forever cool, but it’s ironic because he was never really
cool; he was a Molotov cocktail that could explode at any time. His fans never knew the real Steve McQueen – until
now.”
| What the Brits said about this title: This review by respected critic PETER SHERIDAN is reprinted exactly as it appeared on November 22, 2009 within London's SUNDAY EXPRESS |
"With astonishing focus and intensity, Darwin Porter shows how Steve McQueen arrived in New York City as a poor
and obscure twenty-something determined to carve out a path to fame and fortune. His close-up of McQueen, along
with his overview of the icon's psychology and sources of creativity, should prove endlessly fascinating for his fans.
Porter approaches Steve McQueen through his cinematic image: 'A man's man and a woman's dream' to his admirers,
or a star saddled with a face that 'looked like a Botticelli angel who had been crossed with a chimp' to those less
enchanted with his Bad Boy appeal.
Exhibiting a tabloid reporter's enthusiasm, Porter investigates how McQueen developed the unique persona that
captivated audiences in such movies as The Magnificent Seven and Bullitt.
McQueen's early years were a nightmare of abandonment, neglect, abuse, and exploitation. His mother was an
alcoholic; purportedly one of his 'stepfathers' put him on the street as a child prostitute; he spent time in reform school
and ran away to kick around brothels as a towel-boy. All that was a nasty prelude to a direction-changing three-year
stint with the Marines. (he enlisted at 17) and acting classes in Greenwich Village.
If McQueen was secure in anything, Porter assures us, it was his physical appeal and sexual allure. Notorious for
having the morals of an alley cat (according to many sources), he admitted to one of his girlfriends that he would do
anything with anybody--men, women, acting coaches, co-stars, competitors, idols--if it landed him a part. He told Rod
Steiger, 'I became a slut in New York looking for sluts.' There are no complaints on record.
McQueen may have wanted to remain a tantalizing mystery to everyone, but even women he bedded suspected his
competitive friendships with James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, Rock Hudson, George Peppartd, and
others went beyond a few beers and shop talk. Lee Strasberg and Shelley Winters shared their own theories about
mcQueen's sexuality with Porter, and they are suitably lurid.
To his credit, Porter, although at times tarnishing McQueen's luster, celebrates his star to the heavens and,
miraculously, brings us closer to him."
John McFarland SHELF-AWARENESS,com, Oct. 31, 2009
Shelf-Awareness.com is an influential early-morning
bookbuyers' tool: "Daily Enlightenment for the Book Trade"
and obscure twenty-something determined to carve out a path to fame and fortune. His close-up of McQueen, along
with his overview of the icon's psychology and sources of creativity, should prove endlessly fascinating for his fans.
Porter approaches Steve McQueen through his cinematic image: 'A man's man and a woman's dream' to his admirers,
or a star saddled with a face that 'looked like a Botticelli angel who had been crossed with a chimp' to those less
enchanted with his Bad Boy appeal.
Exhibiting a tabloid reporter's enthusiasm, Porter investigates how McQueen developed the unique persona that
captivated audiences in such movies as The Magnificent Seven and Bullitt.
McQueen's early years were a nightmare of abandonment, neglect, abuse, and exploitation. His mother was an
alcoholic; purportedly one of his 'stepfathers' put him on the street as a child prostitute; he spent time in reform school
and ran away to kick around brothels as a towel-boy. All that was a nasty prelude to a direction-changing three-year
stint with the Marines. (he enlisted at 17) and acting classes in Greenwich Village.
If McQueen was secure in anything, Porter assures us, it was his physical appeal and sexual allure. Notorious for
having the morals of an alley cat (according to many sources), he admitted to one of his girlfriends that he would do
anything with anybody--men, women, acting coaches, co-stars, competitors, idols--if it landed him a part. He told Rod
Steiger, 'I became a slut in New York looking for sluts.' There are no complaints on record.
McQueen may have wanted to remain a tantalizing mystery to everyone, but even women he bedded suspected his
competitive friendships with James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, Rock Hudson, George Peppartd, and
others went beyond a few beers and shop talk. Lee Strasberg and Shelley Winters shared their own theories about
mcQueen's sexuality with Porter, and they are suitably lurid.
To his credit, Porter, although at times tarnishing McQueen's luster, celebrates his star to the heavens and,
miraculously, brings us closer to him."
John McFarland SHELF-AWARENESS,com, Oct. 31, 2009
Shelf-Awareness.com is an influential early-morning
bookbuyers' tool: "Daily Enlightenment for the Book Trade"
| How Critics from the Book Industry Interpreted this Title. |